Beacons are a technology that enables awareness for mobile computing devices. Beacons may broadcast beacon data that establishes regions within a geographic region. Mobile computing devices may, based on the broadcasted beacon data, determine when it has entered or left a region in the geographic region, as well as its approximate proximity to a beacon. Mobile computing devices that receive beacon data may generate beacon events based upon the received beacon data, and may call an application programming interface (API) to send the generated beacon events to a remote computing device for processing.
For example, a department store may place beacons around its retail store. As a shopper walks around the store, the shopper's smartphone may receive beacon data, generate corresponding beacon events, and send the beacon events to a remote computing device. The remote computing device may determine that the beacon events indicate, for example, the department within the store that the shopper is located, and may direct an app running on the smartphone to display a coupon that is related to the department where the shopper is located.